The emergence of new technologies including cloud computing technology allows the distribution of workload between local resources and resources on a remote operations environment. While many enterprises would like to take advantage of cloud technology for their contact centers, there continue to be a number of inhibitors with this approach ranging from security concerns, voice network requirements, and contractual commitments with existing vendors (carriers). While there are current approaches which may be able to superficially overcome some of these challenges, as the customer requirements evolve, there are a number of common challenges which remain which are not currently addressed by existing vendors or technologies and require a unique approach. These challenges commonly arise as the deployments move from a single site to multiple sites, in which case there is a need for a mixed model where media traffic is managed both locally at the contact center premises and in the cloud.